Page 48 of Don't Bet On It
Zach’s hand landed on his wife’s back. “I’ll make sure she stays away.”
“Good luck with that,” Olivia muttered.
Zach gripped her hand tightly. “I think you monitoring the atmosphere in the lounge is a great idea. My wife and I will gladly remove ourselves from the situation.”
“Is that okay with you?” Candy asked Kyla.
“Of course,” Kyla replied. She was suddenly doing a great impersonation of the sun. “I think that’s an absolutely fabulous idea. I can’t wait.”
She was such a liar. Nobody was going to call her on it, though.
“Great.” Candy kept smiling. “Then we have a plan forward.”
Twenty minutes later, only Ronan and I were left outside the therapy room.
“That could’ve gone better,” he said when the silence had stretched too long.
“Way, way better,” I agreed.
He looked at me, then at the floor, then back at me. “Do you want to get a drink and forget this day ever happened?”
My heart leaped at the suggestion. “Yeah, that sounds like the perfect way to end this miserable day.”
“Good. Let’s get out of here.”
14
FOURTEEN
We went to a bar that was off Strip. We figured it was better to pick a spot where we were less likely to be recognized. The bar we chose was familiar to me but not to her, a little hole-in-the-wall I visited when I needed to disappear.
We both ordered beers—no fancy cocktail for Tallulah this time—and we sat across from each other in a cozy booth. Neither of us said anything for a long time.
I finally broke the silence. “Did you really have therapy?”
She made a face. “I can’t believe that’s what you’re focused on,” she complained, rolling her eyes.
Was she embarrassed? I’d been embarrassed about my therapy for the longest time. Maybe she needed to hear that, I mused. “I’ve had therapy,” I offered, trying to sound nonchalant.
She arched an eyebrow but didn’t say anything, instead taking a long swig of her beer.
“A lot of it,” I added. “And for a long time.”
“What sort of therapy?” she asked.
“I have anxiety. My therapist chalks it up to being a constant disappointment to my father. He was a yeller when I was a kid—never anything physical—but I started trying to get ahead of things. You know, make life perfect for him so he wouldn’t have a reason to yell.”
She nodded. “I get it.”
“You do?”
“My mother didn’t yell.” She seemed to be choosing her words carefully. “She was bohemian. Everybody loved Sharon. She was beautiful—a former showgirl—but she was a terrible mother.”
I arched an eyebrow. “You call your mother by her first name?” I tried to picture if I did the same to my mother and internally cringed. That wouldn’t go over well.
“She wasn’t a mother. She was more like an absent-minded older sister.”
“Were you guys friends?”
